Wednesday, June 27, 2007

WaPo on Cheney Part 4: Dick’s Anti-Environmentalist Agenda (1:42 am)

Jo Becker and Barton Gellman call attention to Cheney’s ideological disdain for protecting the environment, his sacrifice at every turn of clean air and water to serve business interests, and the federal courts’ ultimate rejection of his preferred policies.

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Tuesday, June 26, 2007

The Daily Show on Fourth Branch Cheney (12:09 pm)

Crooks and Liars has the video.

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Henry Writes a Letter to the White House Counsel About Multiple Security Violations (11:31 am)

Jesse Lee at The Gavel reports:

Chairman Henry Waxman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who produced the initial report on Vice President Cheney’s disregard for rules governing the handling of classified information, has written has a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding indicating that contrary to the recent claims of White House spokesperson Dana Perino, there is evidence that the White House has repeatedly failed to investigate security violations, take corrective action following breaches, and appropriately protect classified information.

In his letter (full text at link) Chairman Waxman details these particulars:

• White House security officials have been blocked from inspecting West Wing offices for compliance with procedures for handling classified information.

• The White House regularly ignored security breaches.

• The President’s top political advisor received a renewal of his security clearance despite presidential directives calling for the denial of security clearances for officials who misrepresent their involvement in security leaks.

• The White House has condoned widespread mismanagement at the White House Security Office.

And he closes by noting the continued delays inhibiting efforts by the committee to interview White House staffers, which Fielding had himself proposed.

I respectfully request that the interviews that the Committee has been seeking be scheduled without further delay. If this cannot be accomplished, I will recommend to the Committee the issuance of subpoenas at our next business meeting, which is currently scheduled for June 28.

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Lugar Joins the Defeatocrats (1:07 am)

Think Progress reports (with video):

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, tonight announced his support for an immediate shift in Iraq policy, calling on President Bush “to downsize the U.S. military’s role in Iraq and place much more emphasis on diplomatic and economic options.”

In a major speech on the Senate floor, Lugar said that “victory” in Iraq as defined by President Bush is now “almost impossible.” The current course of the war “has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond,” he said.

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WaPo on Cheney Part 3: How The Puppet Master Pulls the Puppet’s Strings (12:03 am)

Focusing on domestic policy in this third part of the series, Jo Becker and Barton Gellman detail how the “The Decider” is in reality “The Rubber Stamper” for decisions Cheney has made. A couple of exceptions are cited to prove the rule.

There are a number of noteworthy revelations in the article. Cheny preferred Jim Jeffords leaving the Republican Party to scaling back GOP tax cuts; in Cheney’s mind it was much better that tax money should go to rich folks rather than the special-education needs which Jeffords championed. Cheney also stabbed his pal Alan Greenspan in the back, to maintain the big tax cuts which Greenspan believed would result in increased deficits that would lead to higher long-term interest rates, and the elimination of any economic short-term benefit from the cuts.

One of the most interesting stories told is that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, his top deputy, Paul McNulty; and FBI Director Robert Mueller all threatened to resign if they were forced to relinquish evidence seized by the FBI in the raid on the congressional office of Democrat William Jefferson, when the House Republicans (“a number of their own members under investigation for other matters”) demanded the seized files be returned. Cheney brokered a deal, rubber-stamped by Bush, whereby Jefferson was eventually indicted, yet “nearly half of the files remain off-limits, tied up in legal disputes.”

The bottom line is that Bush is The Rubber Stamp President, who merely approves the decisions Dick Cheney has made for him, because Bush is unwilling and disinterested in (and likely incapable of) doing any serious thinking for himself. Pretty much a relationship exacly like Mortimer Snerd and Edger Bergen.

posted by Brian Zick | 1 comment

Monday, June 25, 2007

Fighting Back Against Voter Intimidation and Campaign Disinformation (6:34 pm)

Jesse Lee at The Gavel reports

The House has passed the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, H.R. 1281, which would prohibit and punish deceptive practices that aim to keep voters away from the polls on Election Day. This bill protects every American citizen’s right to vote by making voter deception, for the first time, a crime, by increasing the penalty for voter intimidation, and by calling upon the Justice Department to correct and prevent misinformation campaigns.

Rahm Emanuel, who sponsored the bill, speaks in its favor.

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Political News Video Aggregator (3:34 pm)

Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire has a new Political News Video Aggregator up and running, and he’s soliciting feedback.

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Some Reaction to WaPo Cheney Story Part 2 (11:22 am)

Spencer Ackerman at TPM Muckraker:

At every stage in the post-9/11 debate, Cheney and his staff sought to enshrine torture as official U.S. policy, relying on a legalistic distinction between “torture” and “cruelty.”

Christy at Firedoglake has two posts on the subject. In the first she calls attention to a quote from Alberto Mora, former chief counsel for the US Navy:

“To preserve flexibility, they were willing to throw away our values.”

In her second, she focuses attention on Cheney butt boy Timothy Flanigan, and recalls that the Bush administration had wanted him to be the replacement when James Comey resigned.

Emptywheel at The Next Hurrah notes how Cheney and Addington rejected sound advice from their staunchest ideological allies, who they then forced to defend in public the very arguments they had vigorously opposed in private.

Kevin Drum:

As today’s piece shows, the pushback from both the courts and Congress against Cheney’s hardline stands has already been substantial — and I suspect it’s only going to get stronger as time goes by. Cheney’s goal was to give the president more power, but in the end his monomania blinded him to the fact that he was accomplishing just the opposite. Much like his response to the war on terror, in fact. But the whole country is paying the price for that.

Anonymous Liberal at Crooks and Liars:

(1) Conspicuously absent from nearly every important scene described in these articles is the President himself.
(2) If you read between the lines in... read more